10. Eurotrash Psychopath
CHAPTER TEN
EUROTRASH PSYCHOPATH
J oe, with his back to the door, watched Percy raise his arms and announce, “Dubois.”
“So you came for the painting,” said the voice from the doorway.
Joe’s stomach sank as Percy replied, “You’re smarter than you look.”
But, “Thank you,” said Philippe Dubois as he advanced into the room. He paused at the foot of the bed, taking Joe in, eyeing Percy. “Who sent you?”
“I came for it because I want it,” Percy replied.
“And who the fuck are you?” With a flick of his gun, “Mask off.”
Percy pushed down the smirk, but Joe knew it was there, so he was doubly compelled when Percy pulled the string to set his eye mask free. He dropped it with a slight flourish, and it fell silkily onto the box in which the haunted painting was waiting to be stolen. An expectant silence settled.
“Well, who are you?” Dubois repeated, only more loudly this time.
Percy frowned towards Joe, as if Dubois had just proven a point Percy had recently made, then he rolled his eyes and gave a bored, “Percy Ashdown.”
Joe might have reprimanded him for saying his real name had he not known him so well. As things stood, he saw the admission for what it was: Philippe Dubois’s death sentence. Nevertheless, he did not expect what came next.
Dubois’s head tilted, and a hazy recognition came into his narcotic eyes. “Have you come to take it back to the gallery?”
Joe’s gaze shot across to Percy, who drawled, “Judging by the state of this room, that may be a rash course of action.”
Dubois kicked a bit of liver away from his shoe as if agreeing, yet he kept the gun trained on the pair. “So you know my secret. Who told you?”
“I’m an art historian,” said Percy. “It’s my business to know which paintings are haunted and which are not. And though we may be unable to display it publicly at this time, it’s still an important work of art, and I don’t appreciate the humidity in this room.”
It took him a few seconds, then, “What?” said Dubois.
Percy dropped his arms and spun around to fix Joe with an expectant smile. “Show him, Ignatius.”
Joe wasn’t sure if he was more annoyed by the name or by Percy turning his back on the gun so fast he expected it to go off, but he was somewhat soothed when Percy thrust the fake painting upright and nodded at him.
“It’s… uh…” Joe started. Percy waited. Dubois waited. “The paint. Here.” Joe ran a finger close by a perfectly perfect swath of fresh paint, racking his brain for what to say. “You can see where it’s… um… not… not like it should be.”
“Your canvas is expanding and shrinking with the change in humidity,” Percy supplied. “That causes cracks.” He trailed his own finger over the place Joe’s had been before flinging it in the direction of the window. “I know the sunlight is coming through there every afternoon, and hitting this painting head on. You’re damaging the pigment. Do you think a century-old work can stand up to the heat of your stinking Belgian summer? I don’t see an air-conditioning unit in here.” He spoke faster the more irate he became, and he was clearly, genuinely pissed off, especially when Dubois cut into his lengthy reprimand.
“The fuck do I care?”
Percy’s aspect darkened considerably, scaring Joe while also turning him on, a schism that he realised somewhere deep inside had probably ruined him for other men. His heart quickened as he heard Percy say softly, “What do you think happens when you make a ghost’s home uninhabitable?”
Dubois whitened appropriately at the thought, and he looked a little harder at the painting.
Percy went on, pointing at the mother and daughter, “They may be blood-sated now?—”
“Or they may not be,” Joe put in.
“Good point, Ignatius,” replied Percy, to some very tight lips, “and therefore we should end this conversation, and fast. What matters is this: if they can’t go back into the painting, they’re out. For good. You, everyone else in this palace, and then all of Bruges is fucked if you don’t start to take better care of the thing. Look.” Percy motioned him over. “You can see the portal to the netherworld beginning to close right here.”
Dubois made his way closer, warily, but with eyes locked onto the painting. “Netherworld?” He repeated, leaning past Percy for a closer look.
“Netherworld?” Joe mouthed over the top of him.
Percy shrugged cheerily and cracked double elbows down on Dubois’s back. He took his head in his hands and prepared to sever the spinal cord with a twist.
But, of course, Joe placed a hand on his, and dropped the infuriating words, “Do you have to break his neck?”
Percy stomped in a pool of blood just like a child and yelled, “He’s a goddamn killer! If there’s anyone I should be able to kill, it’s this bastard!”
“I agree,” said Joe, “in principle. But… this just feels a little cold-blooded, you know?”
“Do you want to talk about blood?” Percy smashed a knee down on Dubois’s struggling back to hold him in place and thrust a finger towards the still-spinning entrails. “Not one of those people will be going home tonight because of him.” Percy closed a hand over Dubois’s mouth and nose, wrapping his other hand tight around his throat.
“Are you suffocating him?” Joe gasped out.
“Shhhht!” Percy threw back, fuming, but wondering all the while how Joe managed to get him in a similar chokehold every time. Always with the not killing people. Unless he had a ‘good’ reason. He knew he never should have taken up with a priest. Even if he was sweet. And gorgeous. Even if he had a beautiful soul. Even if he was, all things considered, the best man Percy had ever met. And even if his dick was the most spectacular thing he had ever?—
A sickening gurgling snapped him out of his increasingly delicious thoughts, so he squeezed a little tighter.
“Percy!”
“Just…” Percy let out a long breath. “We’ll talk when he’s unconscious.”
“Oh. Okay, then.” So Joe waited for Percy to semi-strangle Dubois. Which took longer than he thought it would, were he given to thinking about such things. “Do you think that might give him brain damage?”
“It would be an improvement,” Percy gritted out.
Joe shrugged a half agreement, and a few seconds later, Dubois was dropped to the floor with his face in a puddle of blood. Percy, loyally, kicked him over so he could breathe, pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He threw the case and lighter across to Joe, who did the same. Percy shoved the smoke into the corner of his mouth and pulled the real painting, in its box, off the bed, saying, “We need to go right now. If we’re lucky, he’ll think we left him the painting and he’ll become no more than another player in our gallery of villains. But you must understand the risk in us doing this. He has my name. And he’s not some neo-Nazi thug. He’s a billionaire. He could have either of us killed on a whim tomorrow.”
“Sorry.” Joe paled, but still grabbed their bag and pulled the door wide open for Percy. “I forgot. Just for a second. It just seemed so brutal to do it like that.”
Percy shuffled halfway through the door, side stepping Joe. “That’s generally how murder works. I don’t want to be too blunt, but if you’re going to be in the business, you may need to toughen up just a little.”
“If?” Joe placed two stalling hands on the box, pulling Percy back. “I thought this was our thing now? Partners in crime.”
“Handsome,” said Percy, bemused by the combination of worry, disappointment, hopefulness, and downright irrefusable expectancy in Joe’s gorgeous features, “to be partners in crime, you occasionally have to do crime.”
Joe ripped the painting out of his hands. “I’m doing crime. Watch me steal this painting.”
Percy pulled the painting back, and Joe along with it. “Kiss me first.”
Joe raised a coy chin. “And we’ll be partners?”
“Forever.”
It was just as well Percy had asked for the kiss, because when Joe leaned forward, Dubois’s bullet missed his skull by millimetres.
“The fuck!” yelled Joe.
“Dracula!” screamed Dubois.
“Shit,” muttered Percy. He and Joe tumbled out into the stairway, with Percy just managing to hook the door handle and pull it closed before they tripped over one another. Both grabbed the painting, Percy ran up, Joe ran down, and the violent division sent them both crashing back to the ground.
“Are you insane?” Joe whispered, picking himself back up. “This way!”
Percy yanked the painting back. “That’s exactly what he’ll expect. Let’s make for the roof and wait until he thinks we’ve escaped.”
Percy almost fell over again with the energy Joe used to pull the painting back. “Rule number one of horror movies is don’t run upstairs.”
“Rules are for other people.” Percy leaned close over the painting, his eyes burning into Joe with knee-melting authority. “That way is people. That way is discovery. That way is death. I’ve done this before. Now do you trust me or don’t you?”
“Percy…” Joe sighed, yet before he knew it, one foot then another was ascending the stairs in pursuit. The staircase turned around and around, thinner, dizzying, until it took a final narrow twist towards a worryingly small and apparently disused door.
Without showing a speck of his apprehension that the door wouldn’t open, Percy pulled the clasp back, and they were hit full force by a sharp snap of wind.
“Tell me this isn’t the roof,” Joe muttered.
“Dracula!” came the shout from below, accompanied by a bullet breaking a chunk of stone off the wall by Percy’s arm.
“Shit!” Percy said again, and ushered Joe ahead of him, slamming the door shut behind them.
The calm and balmy spring evening had whipped itself into a frenzy of storm clouds, a moon dancing chaotically in fast, fleeting flashes, and a punishing wind that snapped the letters of the gothic weathervane to and fro on its sharply pointed axis.
Then it began to rain.
“Fuck! The painting!” cried Percy.
“Yes!” Joe called back, searching for something to block the door. “Fuck that painting! If we’d just burned it, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“No, I said— Oh, never mind.” He ripped off his cape to wrap the wooden box.
“Now he takes off his disguise,” Joe grumbled under his breath, pulling at a terracotta tile that wouldn’t give.
“It’s a very important work of ar?—”
“Argh!” Joe yelled, arms flailing about the place in frustration. “Stop saying that! We are going to burn it!”
The door flung open, and the very first shot, let off with no direction but chance, knocked Percy straight to the ground. In a series of stills that blended together so fast Joe could never quite rearrange them properly in his mind again, Philippe Dubois, of all people, got the drop on Percy Ashdown.
One ugly shoe in front of another, he trod directly over the darkening ochre rooftop, the steam from the warm day greeting them with the scent and heaviness of ozone, a flash of lightning behind his black silhouette. He stopped, he turned the gun downward, and Joe lunged.
The second bullet found Percy’s chest just as Joe wrenched Dubois back by the neck. The sound of the shot hitting Percy, his cry of pain, propelled Joe. He simultaneously clamped a hand down on Dubois’s pelvis, slammed the other down on his chest, and brought his knee up hard. He smashed Dubois’s spine in half with one enormous burst of anger and fear and grief. The scream echoed deep into the night, throughout the party, throughout the woods, and came to a halt with stomach-churning efficacy when Joe picked him up, and impaled him, gut first, on the sharp spear of the weathervane. A foul vermilion foam choked the sound out of him, spilling disgustingly down the five-hundred-year-old walls of the chateau as its most recent owner commenced his slow, torturous death.
Joe saw none of it.
He was on the tiles in a second, pulling Percy into him, though Percy had already been half way up without his help.
“Nice murder, darling.” Percy grinned, with a nod at the twitching Belgian.
“Percy, you’re…” Joe brushed a hand over Percy’s chest, feeling the two small breaks in his corset. He looked up at Percy in shock, then slapped a hand down on him. “Percy! You’re fine!”
“Ouch!” Percy yelled. “No, I’m not fine. It hurts getting shot.”
“How did you not tell me you had a bullet-proof corset?”
“Well, that was obvious, wasn’t it?”
“No, that wasn’t obvious!”
“I mean, if you’re going to have a corset made?—”
“That was not obvious!”
“Have we even met? Do you even know me at all?—”
His speech was cut short by a long, punishing kiss. Joe kissed Percy with every ounce of anger, terror, and relief that was wound up tight in his chest and his soul until the fervent, vital flesh and blood that met him with equal ardour convinced him Percy was viscerally alive. He fell, still catching his breath, into Percy’s arms, to be held and loved in the warm, stormy night air, on the windy roof of the ancient palace.
Percy stroked Joe’s hair in the moonlight, watching Dubois’s body twitch, and thinking on the best way to broach the subject.
As illogical as it all was, Joe’s actions made perfect sense to Percy. Joe didn’t routinely kill people, and Percy could only guess at the worries now undoubtedly running around his mind as he hid his face against Percy’s shoulder. Percy tried to cast his mind back to a time he didn’t routinely kill people, but it’s difficult for a grown man with so much life experience to remember the thoughts and feelings of his fifteen-year-old self. He probably felt bad.
No.
He had felt bad.
He had felt bad, then he had locked it away in the vault with all the other horrors. But that was very long ago, and now this oozing corpse in blue sequins only roused revulsion in him, both for what he had made Joe feel and for what he wore.
Percy would kill him again happily. Twice if he could.
Dropping another kiss on Joe’s temple, Percy said softly, “I don’t know if you realise, but that second bullet would have been it for me.”
Joe tilted his face up towards Percy, who was an unusual, unsettling shade of serious.
“He had it aimed right at my skull. You saved my life.”
Joe tightened his fingertips on Percy’s collar and pulled him a little closer, moving his gaze down to the wet ochre tiles. “I’m sorry. I almost got you killed.”
Percy took his hand and kissed it. “No. I almost got me killed. He almost got me killed. I completely underestimated him.”
“If I’d just let you kill him earlier?—”
“That’s not you.” Before he could say another word, Percy caught Joe’s chin with strong fingers and a gentle thumb across his lips. “And it doesn’t need to be.” He kissed Joe, three long, soft pecks. He ran a hand over his back and pulled him against his chest, sinking into his warmth, settling him against his neck. “If it hasn’t been too awful, I’d really like it if you’d keep doing crimes with me.”
He felt Joe’s laugh deep in his chest. “I did all right, then?”
“Mostly.” Percy turned his head languidly to assess Dubois. “Though, as he was about to kill me, I’m not sure that counts as murder. Which is a shame, because it would have been a good one.”
“What are you talking about?” Successfully provoked, Joe shoved him off and climbed to his feet. “That’s a fantastic murder.” A shot of lightning ripped through the sky, illuminating the grisly sight theatrically. Joe flung an arm out to illustrate his point. Unfortunately for him, Dubois’s body flinched at the sound of the thunder that followed.
“Dracula!” he screamed.
“Why does he keep blaming me?” Percy let Joe pull him to his feet, before directing his voice at the dying man. “Ignatius did it.”
Joe slapped his sore chest. “Stop calling me that!”
“Ouch!”
“Dracula!” Dubois screamed louder still.
“Joe.” Percy turned to Joe, so Joe turned to Percy, and Percy said, “I believe it might fall within your code of ethics for me to put him out of his misery right about now before he attracts anyone else up to the roof.”
“But…” Joe assessed Dubois, writhing on his metal skewer. “You know, maybe we should call an ambulance or something?”
“Handsome…” But with one look at Joe’s conflicted face, Percy knew it was a lost cause. He decided to save them both the trouble. He started forward, flipped Dubois’s legs up, wrenched him off the weathervane and onto his shoulder, screaming all the while. After a quick look below to make sure it was clear, Percy flung his body off the side of the building, where it splatted down onto the stone pavement, breaking the head apart, ripping a leg off, and generally leaving more of Dubois on the outside of his body than on the inside.
“What did you do!” Joe rasped out, already by his side and surveying the grisly mess.
Percy shrugged. “It was an accident.” Then to the furious scowl, “I was aiming for the pool.” Joe, he knew, was about to unleash a volley of reprimand, so Percy yelled, “Ignatius, come!” and dashed away into the dark stairwell.
With a great deal of swearing, Joe followed, and from there it was short work (relatively speaking), for the two to find a first-floor bedroom, lower the painting, then themselves, down to their waiting boat on the dark side of the mansion, and row their way back to the woods. A rope was fastened to the painting and hurled over the wall. Percy affixed his cape and his mask and the two wandered back through what was left of the party, out the front door, and, pausing only to pull their prize over the wall, they were away.
Had it been anyone but Percy, Joe might have considered it odd that he had chosen, in advance, such a location to burn the painting. Joe would have just destroyed it first chance he got. But considering how dangerous the entities were, the precautions made sense. Sense to do it in an abandoned shed on a lonely farm. Sense to put the painting aside for a second, outside, while he and Percy went in and lit the candles. Most of them. Percy disappeared for longer than expected to retrieve the painting, which, had it not been so dark, Joe might have noticed was in a box that appeared to have suffered surprisingly little from such an ordeal.
It made perfect sense too for Percy to tip the thing out face down, and Joe was relieved he didn’t have to look at it then, or ever again.
In the flickering light, as the new day dawned, they splashed holy water on the back of the canvas. “Exorcizamus hanc bestiam in Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” They threw salt onto the surface. “Quaesumus, Sancte. Protege adversus spiritus nequitiam et tyrannidem diaboli.” They gave the lot a heavy spritz with lighter fluid. “Vade infernales invasores, putrescentiae mentis et omnes legiones diabolicae.” And Percy dropped the cigarette from his lips onto the painting, watching the lot go up in flames. “Expellimus te a nobis immundum spiritum. Pessima bestia, te ad Infernus projicio.”
Odd, the way nothing came out of there. No screams of the damned, no last-ditch attempts to murder them. But then, Joe had never exorcised a haunted painting before, and unlike Percy, he hadn’t known what to expect.